Pavel Senitsa (1879–1960) was a Ukrainian Soviet composer, folklorist, and teacher. He studied singing with U. Mazetti in 1900–1901 and graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1909, studying double bass and composition. His teachers included A. A. Ilyinsky and S. N. Vasilenko; he also studied composition with B. L. Yavorsky and music theory with R. R. Keneman.
After graduating, Senitsa remained at the conservatory as a teacher of music theory. From 1908, he taught elementary music theory at secondary music schools. Between 1921 and 1931, he worked as a researcher in the ethnographic section of the music division of the People’s Commissariat of Education, recording, studying, and arranging Ukrainian folk songs. From 1923 to 1929, he served as secretary of the ethnographic section of the State Institute of Musical Science, and from 1924 to 1928 as secretary of its ethnographic courses’ presidium.
Senitsa first appeared as a composer in 1903 with his First String Quartet. His works, particularly his instrumental music, were described as innovative in twentieth-century Ukrainian music. He drew extensively on Ukrainian folk-song traditions and wrote operas, symphonic and chamber music, choral works, romances, and vocal duets.
His operas include Life Is a Dream, based on Calderón; The Hired Girl, based on a work by Taras Shevchenko and left unfinished; and Andrei and Marta, both unfinished, with excerpts performed. His orchestral works include two symphonies, the symphonic poem Poplars Here and There, an overture, and a symphonic dance. He also wrote eight string quartets, a piano trio, a woodwind quartet, and works for piano, cello, and violin. His vocal works set poems by Taras Shevchenko, Maksym Rylsky, Pavlo Tychyna, Mykola Filyansky, and Oleksandr Oles. His publications include studies on contemporary Ukrainian music, Ukrainian vocal music, folk songs recorded in Volhynia by N. Nekozachenko, and the life and work of P. Demutsky.